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CHAPTER
17: "SO
THAT THE
TRUTH WOULD
NEVER COME OUT"

With the sentencing of Alisha Owen, the Nebraska judiciary
and law enforcement agencies wanted to ring down the curtain
on the Franklin case, once and for all. They and federal authorities moved to tidy up matters that were left hanging.

Larry King is in prison, but not for child abuse. Under a
plea bargain arrangement finalized with federal prosecutors on June 17,
1991, King is serving a 15-year sentence for embezzlement, conspiracy and making false financial record entries.
Since the Douglas County grand jury deferred to the federal
authorities, and since there was no trial of King on the federal
embezzlement or any other charges, the evidence of child prostitution and abuse perpetrated by King was never presented in
any court.

Jarrett Webb did not stand trial. In a calculated display of
concern, the Douglas County grand jury recommended in May
1990, that Webb be indicted by Washington County prosecutors
for "third degree sexual assault of a minor," Nelly Patterson.
On December 26, 1990, however, Washington County Judge
David Quist dismissed the charges against Webb, ruling that
the statute of limitations had run out on acts committed in
1985. In Nebraska, cases of abuse of children under sixteen
years of age are supposed to receive an automatic extension
of the statute. But although Nelly had reported abuse that began
when she was nine years old, the judge ruled that the assaults
in question were not prosecutable because they occurred two
days after the girl's sixteenth birthday!

Alisha Owen was convicted of lying when she said she was
sexually used by Robert Wadman. I will allow the articles and
statements of others to deal with this, since I have, at Alisha's
request, now agreed to represent her free of charge. I do not
want to say anything here that would jeopardize Alisha or my
ability to help her. But I can say, that Alisha Owen's trial took
the strangest turns I have seen any trial take. Suffice it to say,
that I believe she had the most extraordinary trial there ever
was in Nebraska. I have not a shadow of a doubt that her story
is true, like Paul Bonacci's.

On August 8, 1991, Alisha Owen was sentenced to three
consecutive three to nine year prison terms. As she remarked,
she will be in jail longer than Larry King.

Minutes after Owen's
conviction, Prosecutor Gerald Moran dropped the Douglas County perjury
charges against Paul Bonacci. He also obtained a court order that barred me from gaining
access to other files that would have been used in Paul's trial.

Speaking as Paul's attorney, I charged, "They dropped the
charges so that the truth would never come out."

For months, motion after motion to deposition those Bonacci
accused was denied by Judge Patrick Mullen. Now, Moran
stipulated that any such depositions and discovery were permanently ruled out.

I had seen it
coming. As we moved closer to the commencement of Paul Bonacci's perjury trial, I said many times to all who
would listen, "I guarantee you that Paul Bonacci will never go
to trial. They will either kill him, or dismiss the charges. We are
ready for trial. When we have the trial, the entire picture of crime,
drug dealing, pedophilia and child abuse, and even this satanic
cult activity, will come out, with all the personalities associated
with it. They dare not bring this boy to trial. Or, if they are going
to bring him to trial, they will have to get rid of me first and get
someone in there handling the trial whom they control."

***

For over a year, after the initial flurry of coverage in 1989,
the national news media avoided the Franklin case. On June
19, 1991, two days before the jury convicted Alisha Owen,
CBS-TV featured Nebraska on its prime time show, "48
Hours."

The program, ostensibly on the impact of child abuse in
various communities, stated its conclusion on the Franklin case
at the outset: "Some communities have over-reacted and accused innocent people." Expounding on the alleged injustices
done to those named by victim-witnesses as abusers, the producers had former Police Chief Robert Wadman appear tearful
before the cameras to say that the Franklin case had been "the
most God-awful experience you could ever go through." Omaha
attorney James Martin Davis offered his assessment, that "Bob
Wadman has been scarred for the rest of his life."

Neither Senator Schmit, nor I, nor Owen, nor Bonacci was
interviewed; besides the alleged perpetrators, only Troy Boner
was given air time, to say that he had fabricated all the charges.
Wadman asserted that "Caradori led witnesses, fed witnesses,"
while Boner pronounced that "the whole thing was just a lie,"
and that "Caradori convinced me to do it." The narrator stated,
"Caradori's motives remain unknown."

The impact on Alisha Owen's trial, of such a presumably
authoritative national TV show passing judgment on the Nebraska case, was devastating. Although the judge expressly
ordered the jurors not to watch the program, a good number
of them did, and several reported that it was the main topic of
discussion in the jury room the next morning!

In articles on July 20 and 21 and a lead editorial of July 26,
1991, the World-Herald attacked victim Owen, Senator Schmit,
and myself as "bacteria that cause a plague," and ridiculed the
legislature's investigation as a "Keystone Kop" affair. The
editorial, entitled "The Lessons of Franklin," denounced all
and sundry -- Senator Loran Schmit, myself, the Legislature,
the Omaha news media, Douglas County Sheriff Dick Roth,
and the general public -- whosoever had ever intimated that
the children might be telling the truth -- for "damaging the
reputations of innocent people." Never again, the editorial intoned, should the Legislature exercise its rights to oversee law
enforcement in the state.

***

Neither the Franklin case nor the hideous kind of activity
it involved, however, are over with. The World-Herald itself
demonstrated as much, in a July 20, 1991 article appearing
side-by-side with one of its denunciations of the Franklin investigators. Under the headline "Male Hustlers Move In When
Workers Leave," the paper trumpeted that prostitution and child
abuse were here to stay.

The article quoted Sgt. Ken Bovasso of the OPD: "Male
prostitution has been occurring at 16th and Jackson for years
... I don't think you can stop it ... it will continue to happen."
(This was the same Sgt. Bovasso who supervised Officer Irl
Carmean's work with Loretta Smith, which abruptly terminated. He is also the Bovasso charged in the civil suit filed by
this writer, with having subjected Paul Bonacci "to long hours
of brutal interrogation involving threats, intimidation, [and]
physical and mental abuse ... purposely designed to prevent
him [Bonacci] from disclosing any information he had regarding the conduct of prominent Omaha citizens.") Witnesses
interviewed by the World-Herald described the expensive cars
driven by the men who pick up young boys, and said that
between "tricks" the boys shoot up drugs and discard the hypodermic needles on the sidewalk.

The Franklin case remains alive not only in Omaha, but
in its nationwide and international scope. Karen Ormiston,
Caradori's coworker, reviewed the case in September 1990. In
her notes on a September 22, 1990 conversation with Alisha
Owen's lawyer, Henry Rosenthal, Ormiston recorded:

I did indicate to Henry that these kids were only a small
part of this case, and that the bulk and real intent of this
case was to determine why OPD, FBI, and the NSP had
insisted that they had thoroughly investigated these allegations and concluded that there was no merit to these allegations. I also indicated that the end result of this case should
be to determine where the monies earned from kiddie porn,
child prostitution, and drug activity, were going to. Failure
of the various law enforcement agencies to follow up on
these allegations which they had received from several years
back was also discussed. Again, I stated that the statements
of the kids was [sic] very important, but these kids were
but a small part of the frightening reality and extent of the
"bigger picture" of this case.

Three days later, Ormiston wrote to Senator Schmit in the
same vein:

Gary and I have always maintained that these kids were not
the case -- they were only a small part of it. For instance,
where does all the money go that is earned by child prostitution and kiddie porn, and what is it used for? Why is the
FBI and/or others trying so desperately to cover all this up?
We both know that if these people were just ordinary citizens
that they would certainly be in prison right now based on
the incredible amount of information they, the State Grand
Jury and Federal Grand Jury, have already received. As a
matter of fact, they would have been endicted [sic] based
on just a small portion of this information and the allegations
made against them.

The Franklin investigators had lifted a corner of the rug,
under which could be glimpsed a national and international
organized crime syndicate, engaged in pedophilia, pornography, satanism, drugs, and money-laundering, and protected, as
their own limited investigation began to show, by federal authorities.

Pull a thread on any corner of this vast, seamless web, and
the whole begins to unravel. In the Franklin case, this is nowhere
clearer than in the testimony of Paul Bonacci.

***

I debriefed Paul Bonacci at length, as did private investigator
Roy Stephens, in preparation for the perjury trial that was not to
be. Through his many personalities, each with its own distinct,
partial recollections, Bonacci provided new evidence on child
kidnapping, pornography, and murder taking place in the United
States and abroad. The Franklin case was just one part of what
he knew. The North American Man-Boy Love Association, or
NAMBLA, figured prominently in what else Bonacci could
recall.

The motto of NAMBLA is "Sex before eight, or it's too
late." One of its leaders is named David Thorstadt. Two of
Bonacci's personalities, Sean and Christopher, have "Thorstadt" as their last name. Bonacci reports that he was brought
into contact with Thorstadt through two Omaha men, that he
traveled with Thorstadt to New York, and that he witnessed
NAMBLA-organized auctions of children.

Alexandrew, another Bonacci personality, wrote to Dr.
Densen-Gerber, who had examined him in prison, in April
1991:

I can even recall when and where I remember you from.
Tell me if I'm wrong in which I know you wouldn't remember me. It was in New York on December I believe the
28th or 29th, 1982, it was a Tuesday or Wednesday (not
important). It was a news conference at I believe the Holiday
Inn. I had to wait for David [Thorstadt] with a friend. When
he got done he told me that wicked old witch Gerber was
someone he had to fix somehow.

Densell-Gerber, dubbed "public enemy #1" by NAMBLA
for her efforts to expose the organization, commented, "He's
absolutely right. The details are perfect. ..."

Bonacci may remember events in Europe. He tells of having
traveled to Europe more than once. One of his personalities
speaks and writes German, more fluently than is probable just
from Paul's brief study of German in high school.

***

In July 1991, just as the Franklin case got officially wrapped
up at the sentencing of Alisha Owen, the news broke in Iowa
that Paul Bonacci had given evidence in one of the most notorious kidnapping cases in the country. It was the disappearance
of Johnny Gosch.

Early Sunday morning, September 5, 1982, 12-year-old
Johnny Gosch went out on his Des Moines Register paper
delivery route, as usual. Only that Sunday, he never came
home. For nine years, his parents have searched the country
for him. Most evenings, and weekends when they were not on
the road to check out leads, they sold candy bars in local
shopping centers, to finance the search. In late 1990, the
Gosches got the first major break in years, because of what
Paul Bonacci had to tell.

I had noted that one of the events Paul described reminded
me of the case of Johnny Gosch, which I had read about years
earlier. I went to the library, and confirmed the similarity of
the details of the case, with what Paul said. I then contacted
the Gosch family. They advised me that they had had their fill
of false leads from people who claimed to know something
about their missing boy, and people who claimed to have information for sale but did not seem genuinely interested. But a
couple of weeks later, Mr. Gosch did come to Omaha.

The Des Moines Register of July 24, 1991 reported on
what developed:

A Nebraska inmate has provided details about the abduction
of Johnny Gosch that only someone with firsthand knowledge could have had, his lawyer said Tuesday.

"I am convinced this kid is telling absolutely the truth- ... He never varied on the time. He gave a description of
Johnny's pants, names on his shirt, scars on the body."

DeCamp said he became suspicious of a Gosch connection when he read a transcript of a psychiatrist's interview
with Bonacci in which an "incident" involving a newspaper
carrier was mentioned. DeCamp said Bonacci didn't identify
Gosch by his full name.

"I went to the library and checked on Johnny Gosch. I
wrote to the Gosches and told them I don't know if there
is any validity, but the dates coincide and he talks about
someone from Iowa."

DeCamp said John Gosch, the boy's father, met with
Bonacci, "and started getting chills. I believe he believed
him," DeCamp said.

John Gosch, Sr. walked into the prison in Lincoln, Nebraska
to meet Paul Bonacci for the first time, unannounced. Sitting
down across from him, Gosch asked Bonacci, "Do you know
who I am?" Bonacci replied, "You look like -- it can't be -- the
eyes, you look like Johnny Gosch."

Noreen Gosch told the World-Herald, that paper reported
on July 22, 1991, that Bonacci knew "some incredible things"
about the case. For instance, "There were photographs taken
of Johnny prior to the kidnapping. We know this because a
woman reported it to police. We're convinced Bonacci saw
those pictures. He accurately described the location, which is
not far from our home. He described many things about the
pictures which we have never publicly talked about." Bonacci
also described a mark on Johnny Gosch's body, which the
Gosches had never publicized.

As a result of the Gosch meeting, Roy Stephens came to
visit with me. Shortly after we discussed Paul Bonacci and the
Gosch case, I hired him to check out Bonacci's story on Gosch
and on other things.

Roy Stephens is an Omaha-based investigator and a founder
of the Missing Children's Foundation. A former safecracker who
went straight, Stephens was named "Outstanding Man of the Year" for
1991, by the Nebraska Jaycees, for his work in recovering children. Roy is remembered in Nebraska, as the man who
did what the police and other investigators were unable to do -- locate and cause the conviction of the kidnaper of Jill Cutshall,
the Norfolk, Nebraska girl who disappeared in 1987 and almost
certainly was murdered, though her body was never found.

Stephens was cited as the leading child finder in the nation,
in an article in the 1991 summer supplement to Forbes magazine: "The best in the business in that field, according to a
survey of his peers, is Roy Stephens ... who has recovered
some 50 missing children over the last five-and-a-half years,"
said G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate fame, now a private security
consultant in Florida.

Stephens spent hundreds of hours debriefing Bonacci in
Prison, and many more on the road in Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado
and Minnesota, visiting the sites and tracking down the people
Bonacci told him about. Quoted in the July 22, 1991 World-Herald, Stephens said that Bonacci "hasn't told me anything
that hasn't been true."

Bonacci described to Stephens the kidnapping of Johnny
Gosch, as an eyewitness:

PB: Well, we got up at, oh, before the sun got up. He [Emilio]
said he wanted to go out cause he said that he had been
around here before and stuff and he said that paper boys
would be going out pretty soon. He said he might be able
to, that that would be the best bet. He wanted them, because
he said they were easier on mornings cause there was nobody
else around. Everyone else is asleep. ...

RS: O.K., so it was just you, Mike and Emilio. And you
were in his blue car, the blue Chevy. O.K., then what
happened?

PB: Oh, then he, well, at first he had US, they had Mike was
in the back seat and he was kind of covered up with a
blanket. ... Me I was stuck in the trunk. Because I had said
something and Emilio hit me a couple of times.

RS: What did you say?

PB: Called him a dirty bastard because of the way he treated
Mike. ... At night when we was in the hotel and stuff he'd
brought some other guy and made Mike have sex with that
guy. I didn't think that was right. ...

RS: O.K., so you're in the trunk and Mike is on the floor or on
the back seat covered with a blanket, and what [happened]?

PB: And then I heard them talking to somebody else at the
car, but I don't know who it was cause we stopped. He was
talking to somebody asking for directions; asking where
some place was. And it sounded like there was more than
one kid. It sounded like there was a couple of them there.
And then we went around the block and he let me out of
the trunk and told Mike to, he says, if you don't do what 1
say, I'm gonna shoot you. He has a gun he pulled out and
pointed at me and says, you do what I say or I'll shoot you.
We drove around. ...

RS: So you're out of the trunk now?

PB: Yeah. I was sitting in the back seat with Mike.

RS: You're both sitting there? Were you hidden in the back
seat or were you just sitting up normal?

PB: Down low, kind of sitting on the floor. And then Emilio,
I guess, I don't know what he did, but he, Mike told me,
he says, when the car slows down, he says, when you feel
the brakes jerk, he says, I'll grab him and you just hold him
down. And so it happened quick. It's like we went up, I felt
the brakes jerk, and I saw the door fly open and I saw Mike
jump out and the next thing I know there was somebody,
you know, he grabbed the boy and he'd thrown him in and
my job, you know we were supposed to do is just hold him
down and gag his mouth so he couldn't yell or nothing. And
then after we had, just, like two seconds, just spun off, tore
off, got out of there.

Two other people were involved in the kidnapping, one of
whom was a local contact. Bonacci named them all. According
to a July 18 article in the Des Moines Register, "Stephens has
told the family, sources say, that [Bonacci] identified the Des
Moines 'contact' from a photograph. The suspected contact,
said [Noreen] Gosch, has been under suspicion by the family
for some time." Furthermore, "Gosch said Stephens told her
the same ring may be involved in other kidnappings in the region,
including the suspected abduction of Des Moines Register carrier
Eugene Martin, 13, in south Des Moines in 1984, and more
recently, that of Jacob Wetterling in St. Joseph, Minn."

Bonacci described a network of safehouses, where the pedophile ring stored kidnapped children before selling them. He said
he met Johnny Gosch again several years later, and provided a
detailed description of the farm on which Gosch was being
kept in Colorado and of Gosch's new "parents," a homosexual
man and a lesbian in their thirties. After Gosch once attempted
to run away, Bonacci reported, they branded him on the buttocks
with the same brand used on horses and cows on the farm, of
which Bonacci drew a picture for Roy Stephens.

The man called Emilio was part of a highly organized national
and international kidnapping ring. Stephens asked Bonacci, "What did Emilio tell you that he did for a living?"

PB: Kidnap kids and took them to Las Vegas.

RS: What kind of kids?

PB: Any kid that he could get.

RS: Does it matter if it's male or female?

PB: Him, no, him he'd kidnap boys or girls. Main thing he'd
kidnap was boys, though, cause he said he'd get more
money for them. Emilio used to tell me all kinds of things
like how they could get away with kidnapping kids and sell
them out of the country. He said most of the kids were sold
in Las Vegas at a ranch he took me to one time for an
auction. I went with him to Toronto several times where
boys were sold. I saw a few girls once in a while. He said
virgins could bring as much as $50,000. They called the
boys toys, used toys brought in money but not as much. ...
Most boys were sold out of America cause it's harder to
find them. The men who bought them had planes and could
transport them easily.

Bonacci ran into Emilio again in March 1986, near Buena
Vista, Colorado, on the second occasion he saw Johnny Gosch.

Despite the astonishing new information from Paul Bonacci
on the Gosch kidnaping, West Des Moines police "have not
interviewed Bonacci and have no plans to do so," according
to the July 21, 1991 Des Moines Sunday Register. "We are
aware of what's going on," said Lt. Gerry Scott, in charge of
the Gosch investigation. "We're not going to reinvent the wheel.
This has been investigated in Nebraska. When things need
investigating, here, they will be investigated."

***

Bonacci also conveyed to Stephens specific recollections
related to two other notorious cases -- pedophilia and ritualistic
abuse in Jordan, Minnesota, and satanism and child sacrifice
near Bakersfield, California.

In 1983 and 1984, Scott County, Minnesota prosecutor
Kathleen Morris investigated and began to prosecute a ring of
child molesters centered in the town of Jordan. Child victims
had testified about satanic rituals and the filming of children
in sex acts. "The case involves the largest adult-juvenile sex
ring in Minnesota history, authorities said," reported the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on November 18, 1983.

At least 30 children told police they had been molested.
Morris brought indictments against 24 adults. People magazine
of October 22, 1984 summarized, "The village harbored rings
of adult sex abusers who incestuously victimized their own
children and other children during ritualistic sex parties involving sadism and bestiality. Some of the children described a
bizarre sexual variation of hide-and-seek in which children
who were 'found' were taken to a bedroom and abused." The
children told of witnessing three ritualistic murders.

Child care workers and psychologists found the children
highly credible. Psychologist Michael Shea, who treated some
of them, told People, "Children are not able to fantasize in
such graphic detail about sexual acts which are outside their
experience. And they certainly can't be coerced, or bribed
or brainwashed into making statements about their parents."
Minnesota psychologist Susan Phipps Yonas, who also interviewed some of the children, told the Star Tribune that she
fully believed their reports: "It's not just the details that make
them convincing, but the [emotional] effect behind the stories.
They're extraordinarily upset when they recount these things.
They'd have to be world-class actors to be so convincing if it
wasn't true." Phipps Yonas speculated that since the children
talked about large sums of money changing hands, organized
crime was likely involved.

Morris indicted the ring's chief figure, 26 year-old James
Rud, on 108 counts of child abuse. His parents, Alvin and
Rosemary Rud, and his 17-year old brother were also indicted,
as were several other people from the Valley Green Trailer
Park, 35 miles outside of Minneapolis-St. Paul. Most of the
abused children also lived in the trailer park.

Like the Franklin investigators in Nebraska, Morris came
under savage attack from media and the political establishment
in her state. Under pressure, she ultimately turned the investigation over to state Attorney General Hubert "Skip" Humphrey,
Jr. To the horror of many, Humphrey soon released a 29-page
report titled "Scott County Investigations," which closed the
case, citing "insufficient evidence." Minnesota Governor Rudy
Perpich then appointed a commission to investigate Morris!
Humphrey named one of his political cronies, lawyer Kelton
Gage, as "independent counsel" to present evidence against her.

Yet in 1991, from prison in Nebraska, Paul Bonacci identified by name, from pictures, some of the same individuals
Morris had been investigating. Some of Bonacci's conversations with Stephens about these events have been transcribed:

RS: You know anybody else who hurts children or takes kids
or sells them or takes pornography of them?

PB: I don't know what their names are and they're all from
mainly not even from. ...

RS: From this area? Where are they from?

PB: Minnesota and California.

RS: Do you know where or who?

PB: ... in Minnesota there was one guy named James Rud.
He lived with his mom and dad, cause I remember we went
out to his place one time in a trailer.

RS: And that's in Minnesota?

PB: Yeah, that was in Jordan, Minnesota.

A second exchange between Bonacci and Stephens, recorded
on September 28, 1991, shed more light on the events in Jordan.

RS: What do you remember about this little boy named Joey?

PB: Joey? Oh, that's what I wanted to tell you about ...
Jordan, Minnesota.

RS: Jordan? That's where he came from?

PB: Well, he wasn't kidnapped, his parents let him go, 'cause
his parents were friends with Emilio and they had some
strange ...

RS: It's okay.

PB: That there's a bunch of parents, that are not just parents
but other people in that town that were abusing kids. ...
Bob Bentz, that's the one I told you about that had the
two [inaudible]

RS: And this guy's name was Bob?

PB: Uh-huh. Bentz.

RS: How do you spell it? Bentz.

PB: B-e-n-t-z.

RS: And he's in Jordan? When was this?

PB: Mmmmm, that was in '82.

Stephens had asked Bonacci to draw up a list of both abusers
and victims. Later in the same conversation, Stephens went
through the written list out loud.

RS: Okay. What do you have written here? What does this
say? Who is this Bob? Is that his wife's name? Lois? Bob
and Lois Bentz? They had three sons? Okay. This is the
Bob you told me about?

PB: Uh-huh [yes].

RS: And Joey is theirs? Okay, and Jim Rud is the guy who
lives with his mom and dad at the Valley Green Trailer Park?

PB: Yeah. 'Cause I remember one of the games we played
was called hide and seek basketball.

RS: Hide and seek basketball? How do you play that? You're
not talking about regular basketball, are you?

PB: No, it's sex. ... A lot of people lived in Jordan that
were doing that [child abuse]. 'Cause when we were up
there [inaudible] they tortured a couple [of children] that
came in.

Bob and Lois Bentz were tried for child abuse, including
of their own three sons, in August 1984, and acquitted. However, their acquittal left grave doubts in the minds of many in
the town. Some incidents from the trial were featured in the
People story:

Among the children who testified against the couple was
their 6-year-old boy, Tony, who told the court that his father
had sodomized him and his brothers. Although the boy was
confused over the meaning of the sexual terms, when a
defense attorney asked if he feared that his father would
abuse him again, the boy looked across the courtroom at
Bentz and replied, "You won't do that no more, right?"

During the grueling cross-examination, defense attorneys
succeeded in shaking some of the young witnesses' stories
by hammering away at dates, places and word meanings.
However, a 12-year-old girl steadfastly refused to waver
from her testimony. When a defense attorney accused her
of lying, she snapped: "You're just helping Bob and Lois
[Bentz] to get out of this stuff, this child-abusing stuff, I'm
not lying, you guys are. It's the truth, they hurt us." Later
she rushed tearfully into the arms of a social worker.

Though the Bentzes got off in the Scott County case, James
Rud plea-bargained. Before the case was scratched, he pleaded
guilty to lesser charges. In 1978 and 1980, Rud had been
convicted of sexually abusing children in Virginia and Minnesota, respectively.

On other occasions, Bonacci described ritualistic abuse and
the sacrifice of a boy at a place near Bakersfield, California. The
details of his testimony, including names, are consistent with
the 1983-1985 investigation by Kern County, California Sheriff
Larry Kleier into satanic ritual abuse there. Despite attempts by
the state attorney general, John Van De Kamp, to discredit the
Kern County investigation as based on "hearsay" and "hysteria,"
a grand jury indicted seven people on 377 counts of pornography,
child abuse and drug possession. They were convicted in a 1986
trial and sentenced to a total of 2,600 years in prison, but a state
appeals court overturned the convictions in 1990, on grounds of
"egregious prosecutorial misconduct."

***

Several months after becoming Paul Bonacci' s attorney in
the summer of 1990, I remarked to a friend, "You know, the
more I find out about this case, the more I am absolutely
convinced that drugs are a major part of it. Everywhere you
turn, there are drugs, and on a huge scale. The kids report Alan
Baer involved in bigtime drugs from California, Larry King
has been reported as a major pusher, and Wadman's name has
been strongly linked to drugs."

Through the use of young boys and girls, Larry King was able
to have a nationwide drug transportation network. It interfaced
perfectly with his ability to compromise and blackmail politicians or businessmen. Having cocaine available could make it
easier for Larry King to entice prominent people, after they
got drunk, and then high on the drug, into sex with a teenaged
girl or boy.

According to the accounts of Paul Bonacci and Alisha Owen,
Alan Baer was running a nationwide drug ring, and used children 18 or under as couriers. Once the children became 19,
and thus could be tried as adults, Baer let them go.

Senator Ernie Chambers observed to the Executive Board
of the Legislature on December 19, 1988, just as the Franklin
investigation was getting underway:

My community is ravaged by drugs. We see the Omaha
police picking up kids from 14 to 18-years old with a half
an ounce or less of these narcotic substances and that is
supposed to be fighting the drugs. These are nickel and dime
pushers, not suppliers, not mid level suppliers. A few days
ago the Douglas County Sheriff got together with some of
the county sheriffs, one was from Sarpy, and they made a
raid and they got a pound and a half of heavy drugs, some
money and some weapons. They didn't tell the Omaha police. And I talked to the Douglas County Attorney and I
told him I was glad they didn't tell them because had the
Omaha police been notified this drug bust would never have
occurred, they would have told the individual, they would
not have gotten a substantial amount of the drugs. These
nickel and dime people in my community that they are
arresting don't have the connections or the money to bring
the amount of drugs into the City of Omaha that are coming.
And certainly the little piddling amounts that are picked up
by the police have no meaning or significance. When we
wanted, as a community, to help organize and work with a
task force of black officers to address the drug problem and
the gang problem, Chief Wadman fought it tooth and nail
and did not want it, wanted to deny that the problem existed.
And I said the only reason that a police official would be
opposed to this kind of action is because he knows something
or he's part of it.

One of Caradori's informants stated that Wadman was instrumental in bringing the drug-trafficking gangs, the Los Angeles-based Bloods and Cryps, into Omaha. According to a June 19,
1989 report by Caradori's predecessor at the Franklin committee, Jerry Lowe, members of the Bloods and Cryps were identified by local police as driving Larry King's car.

***

As soon as awareness dawned, that sexual and ritual abuse
of children was happening in Nebraska, and that it was being
protected from within the political and law enforcement establishment, a resistance movement on behalf of the children took
shape. In her famous interview on Geraldo Rivera's TV special
on satanism, Kathleen Sorenson identified her group as Believe
the Children. Later, friends of Kathleen were active in the
Concerned Parents group, which urged that the testimony of
Loretta Smith and others be investigated on its merits, instead
of dismissed out of hand.

Against the shroud of cover-up, imposed by the World-Herald in its treatment of the Franklin case, some newspapers
showed the integrity to keep all aspects of the case alive in
Nebraska. Foremost among these has been the Nebraska Observer, published by the Nebraska Citizens' Publishing Group
and edited by Frances Mendenhall.

While most of the
national press dropped the Franklin story,
in the summer of 1990, Executive Intelligence Review sent an
investigative team into the state to report on the case first-hand.
Its July 27, 1990 article, "FBI covers up child abuse, murder
in Nebraska," brought a rain of denunciations on the pages of
the World-Herald, which made much of the fact that EIR was
founded by the jailed economist and presidential candidate,
Lyndon LaRouche. After an initial "no comment" from an FBI
spokesman, Nick O'Hara's successor at the Nebraska-Iowa
office of the bureau, Charles Lontor, took to the pages of the
World-Herald on August 13, to denounce such talk of cover-up as "nonsense," and to say that the FBI did "not wish to
become involved in a futile public debate with them [EIR] or
anyone who may choose to support their efforts."

It was my view, that the Franklin cover-up was so massive
in Nebraska, that it could not be broken just inside the state.
In 1991, the case did receive attention in the Italian weekly
Avvenimenti and in Pronto, published in Spain. Both articles
came from Italian journalists Giovanni Caporaso and Massimiliano Cocozza Lubisco, a team that has produced many stories
for Italian television. After their own May 1991 investigative
trip to Nebraska, they wrote about the kidnapping and sale of
children as "the market of horrors." They quoted Paul Bonacci
and Roy Stephens at length.

I was glad of the presence of other international observers,
who came when the Schiller Institute, founded by Helga Zepp-LaRouche in 1984 and based in Washington, D.C. and Laatzen,
Germany, organized an ad hoc human rights fact-finding mission to Nebraska. In response to a Schiller Institute appeal,
nine people from five U.S. states and three foreign countries
constituted themselves as the Citizens' Fact-Finding Commission to Investigate Human Rights Violations in Nebraska.
Among them were the Reverend James Bevel, former close
associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an Austrian leader of
the European Citizens' Initiative to Protect Life and Human
Dignity, the president of the Ukrainian Political Action Committee of the United States, and a clinical psychologist from
Canada. They came from October 11 to 17, 1990, and during
that week, interviewed many witnesses, visited the Omaha
FBI office, watched hours of videotaped testimony from child
victims, and read mountains of documents.

The Citizens' Fact-Finding Commission issued a report that
denounced the "torture and murder-in-progress" of Paul Bonacci, and said that there was so little recourse through the law
left in Nebraska, that an international spotlight needed to be
shined on the systematic "violations of human rights" there.

After these findings were published, one hundred fifty clergymen, civil rights leaders and other community leaders from
throughout the United States signed a "Letter to the Citizens
of Nebraska," which endorsed the findings and called on the
Senate Franklin committee to pursue its investigation "at all
costs." The World-Herald refused to print the Commission's
findings and the endorsement letter, even as a paid advertisement. In an October 20, 1990 article by Bob Dorr, the paper
attacked the independent fact-finders as "LaRouche Investigators."

There and in subsequent articles, Dorr called upon the expertise of so-called "anti-cult" specialists from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith and the Cult Awareness
Network (CAN), in attempts to rebut the Commission's work.
Rev. Bevel came in for particularly strong attack by such defenders of the cover-up.

Rev. Bevel was so horrified by what he witnessed during
the short mission of the Fact-Finding Commission, that he
moved to Nebraska for a period of months, to work with citizens
resisting pedophilia and the cover-up of it. He was the target
of death threats and physical attack in Omaha.

At first I thought that Rev. Bevel must be crazy, or a radical
trouble-maker. Why would a middle-aged man with a family
to support take off and move to Nebraska in the middle of
winter, to take up a cause that could guarantee him nothing
but grief, and might get him killed?

But as I watched him work and saw his dedication, I learned
more about faith, hope, charity and truth from this one dedicated
individual, than from all the priests, pastors and rabbis I have
known. Rev. Bevel cared about one thing -- children. Children
were being abused and were going to be abused, unless something was done. The more Bevel worked, the more he was
condemned by the World-Herald for his efforts in the black
community, particularly, to expose the sins.

Rev. Bevel and others found there was a tremendous unspoken support among the people of Nebraska, for the victims of
the child abuse ring. Radio call-in polls showed that Nebraskans, by margins of up to ten to one, do not agree with the
way prosecutors have handled the Franklin case or believe that
the witnesses are hoaxers.

During 1991, a newly-formed citizens' group called the
Nebraska Leadership Conference mobilized a large number of
people, hundreds of whom traveled to Lincoln for several large
conferences. At two of the conferences, detailed background
presentations on the exploitation of children and on the Franklin
cover-up were made by knowledgeable people from many different institutions and organizations in Nebraska. At a third, out-of-state specialists on satanic cults were given the opportunity to
educate Nebraskans on the scope of the problem. The conferences turned into mass meetings, which rallied support for the
victim-witnesses.

In September 1991, the Nebraska Leadership Conference
issued a pamphlet called "The Mystery of the Carefully Crafted
Hoax," which documented many of the inconsistencies in the
Douglas County grand jury's and other official versions of the
Franklin case.

After Alisha Owen's conviction, Frances Mendenhall's Nebraska Observer devoted its July 12, 1991 issue to a dissection
of the flaws in Alisha's trial, and related matters. One article
was, "Owen Trial Was a Far Cry from Justice," in which
Mendenhall reviewed such key issues as the contradictory behavior of Troy Boner and the lack of any demonstrated basis
for the central claim of the prosecution, that Alisha Owen was
motivated by a desire for publicity. Other headlines included,
"Evidence the Owen Jury Didn't Get to See," "Common Mis-Conceptions About the Owen Trial," "Caradori Widow Questions Fairness of '48 Hours'," and "Bonacci Recalls Early
Trauma," which drew out the implications of dropping the
charges against Paul.

Thousands of copies of that Observer issue have circulated
in Nebraska.

Many demonstrations of support for Paul Bonacci and Alisha
Owen were held in Lincoln and Omaha, outside the facilities
where they have been imprisoned. A group called the Children's
Civil Rights Committee was active in these, and also began
holding weekly prayer meetings in Omaha, in December 1990.
The Children's Civil Rights Committee has been instrumental
in efforts to reinstate the Legislature's investigation into the
Franklin case.

Another group that played a key role in 1990 and 1991
efforts to crack the Franklin cover-up, by lobbying and literature
distribution, was the Commonwealth Depositors Committee,
led by Reuben Worster and Dr. Melvin Bahensky. A respected
veterinarian, now in his eighties, "Doc" Bahensky is legendary
for his spirit and tenacity in fighting to expose the wrongs in
the Commonwealth and Franklin cases. He always maintains,
that they are one and the same.

***

In October 1991, the Nebraska State Parole Board voted
5-0 to parole Paul Bonacci, who has been serving a five-year
sentence since 1989. On Halloween, soon after a scathing
World-Herald editorial against the decision, the board reversed
itself. As Bonacci' s attorney, I responded with the following
press release:

From beginning to present, Franklin has been a cauldron of
cover-up skillfully executed by powerful and wealthy thieves
and pedophiles. Punishment, destruction and even elimination of those who would expose or try to correct the evil
wrought by these individuals is the reward of child victim-witnesses and any who would aid those children.

The perpetrators have corrupted institutions of government. Abetted and at times absolutely led by the Omaha
World-Herald they have systematically turned lies into truth
and truth into lies. A "free" Paul Bonacci would continue
to provide information which helps expose individuals and
offenses involved in this cover-up. So, one way or another,
they intend to eliminate Paul Bonacci -- no matter what it
takes. That is my very real fear.

Therefore the World-Herald intimidated an already
frightened and beleaguered parole board into effectively reversing their original proper decision to allow this youth out
of prison. If there is a God above, the Franklin cover-up will
fail and the evil and individuals involved will be exposed.
Meanwhile, the visible payoff to the Parole Board will be
a glowing editorial in the Omaha World Herald.

Right on schedule, the World-Herald came out on November
3, 1991, with an editorial, "Vote on Bonacci Was Sensible."
Flaunting its clout more blatantly than ever, the paper took
credit for the reversal, attributing it to lobbying by "the press
and others."

I have often said that I wish I had never heard of the Franklin
Credit Union, Larry King, or Paul Bonacci. I sincerely mean
this. Why? Simply because I believe Paul Bonacci is telling
the truth, and that our institutions of government have been as
badly corrupted as that implies.

If I still had the luxury of believing, as I once did, that the
allegations of drug abuse, child abuse, pedophilia, theft and
satanic cult activity were exaggerated imaginings of some over-active child and adult imaginations, then I would not have to
do anything about Franklin. I could still be enjoying an income
of $400,000 per year as a lobbyist, without having to work
too hard, instead of being financially strangled as clients are
intimidated away from hiring me, because of the Franklin connection.

But I do know that it's true, and because of my upbringing,
I have no choice but to plow ahead.

Were there any reasons for me or others to be "afraid or
concerned" about our lives? You make your own judgment,
after I tell you about just one documented incident.

At the height of the legislative Franklin investigation, when
the Douglas County grand jury was also going full bore, I
received a phone call in the middle of the night, from a close
friend of mine in Omaha, who wanted to warn me that my life
might be in danger. It was approximately a week after Gary
Caradori died.

"Why do you believe this?" I asked. "Are you sure you are
not falling into a trap, overreacting to rumors?"

"I don't know,"
answered Mary Kay Evans, a former campaign chairman of mine. "As you know, I am close to one of
the University of Nebraska Board of Regents members, Dr.
Robert Prokop. He called me and said he did not particularly
like you or really ever get to know you, but that he felt he had
an obligation, morally, to warn you."

I knew of Dr. Prokop. Everybody in Nebraska did.

Prokop had been chairman of the Board of Regents for many
years. He had been a Democratic candidate for Governor of
Nebraska just recently. And he was somewhat famous as a
police pathologist, not only in Nebraska, but for many cities
in the United States.

"What did Prokop
say," I asked, "that has you so concerned?"

"He simply told me he was with the police, riding around
talking to individuals on the street -- which he does once a
month, he said -- and he learned that you were supposed to
be the target of an assassination, because of your Franklin
involvement and trying to force the investigation there. And
he said that if I cared about you, that I should call you so that
at least his conscience would be clear."

The next day, I called Dr. Robert Prokop. I told him who
I was and what Mary Kay had said. I asked him if Mary Kay
was imagining things, or maybe just getting carried away a bit,
because of all the concern and fear that Franklin was generating.

Prokop was stern and nervous. "We really don't know each
other," he said, "but I feel I have a moral obligation to tell
you that when I was with the police last night, one of the very
reliable informants we talked to advised us that you, John
DeCamp, were supposed to be the 'first hit,' instead of Gary
Caradori. In other words, Mr. DeCamp, you were supposed to
be eliminated first and then Gary Caradori if that was necessary.
Now that Caradori has been killed, I was concerned that maybe
they will go ahead with the next hit, which means you."

"Are you serious?" I asked. "Do you really think there is
even a remote possibility that could happen?"

"I have no doubt it could happen," Prokop said. "I have
been doing police work and autopsies for almost as long as
you have been around. And I think I know the difference
between conversation and serious talk. That's why I felt I had
to warn you, even if it is not my area of responsibility."

After warning me by phone, Prokop took it upon himself
to make three separate trips to Lincoln from Omaha, to meet
with the legislative Franklin committee and try to warn them
of the seriousness of this threat.

So, am I crazy to be concerned? Is Prokop crazy? Maybe
so. But there have been too many surprises for people closely
involved in Franklin, who ended up dead.

I was prepared to take Bill Colby's warning seriously, when
he sat me down and warned me that Franklin would never be
dealt with without exposure in the national and international
press.

***

What is Franklin really all about?

Was it theft by a black politician of forty million dollars?
Is it child abuse?

Is it just a big "homosexual party," as Mr. Fenner from the
NCUA suggested to me?

Is it laundering money for Iran-Contra?

Were there murders to protect rich and powerful people?

Were there politicians involved in the sins and the cover-up?

Does it involve satanic cult activity and pedophilia, and
exploitation of children in horrible ways?

Why does the World-Herald care so much, and why has it
gone overboard to damage and discredit anyone who would
maintain that Franklin is more than a hoax?

Why do people continue to believe, that there was and is a
cover-up, by prominent wealthy businessmen and politicians?

What I am going to offer now are my conclusions, my
beliefs, based on the massive information I have seen and heard
since Franklin broke in November 1988.

First, I have absolutely no doubt, that prominent individuals,
whom everybody in Omaha is familiar with, and many of whom
have been named during the investigation, have engaged in
long-term activity involving drug peddling and drug abuse,
child abuse, and pedophilia, with particular attention to the
abuse of young boys.

That in the case of Larry King and the cadre of people he
dealt with closely, boys and girls like Paul Bonacci, Troy Boner,
Danny King, and Alisha Owen were used as drug couriers for
a national program of illegal narcotics marketing. They were
"throwaway" kids. Because they were teenagers and younger
when they were doing this activity, they provided a perfect
insulation blanket between the real drug czars, like Larry King
or Alan Baer, and the law.

Larry King was able to read people and compromise people
through their weaknesses. And Larry King knew whom to cater
to and to compromise. Compromise the heads of institutions.
Cater to the secret sins of a law enforcer, so that when you
need protection, that official is not in a position to do anything
but sit and watch your illegal activities. Cater to the weakness
for drugs, or 13-year-old girls, or 9-year-old boys, and then
blackmail as required.

Yes, based on what I have seen, much of which I am legally
forbidden to reveal, I have no doubt that child abuse, pedophilia,
illegal drug trafficking, murder, satanic cult activity, theft, and
a host of other crimes were involved in what we have come
to know as the Franklin scandal.

Just as surely do I believe, that there was and is a cover-up.

Just as surely do I fear, that nothing will be done about it.

So, let me conclude my saying simply
this: Bill Colby, you
were right. It is too big. I am too small. They are too rich and
powerful, and go up too high in business and government, for
me to touch them or do anything about it. Yes, it is something
that I should have abandoned long ago and faced up to the
fact that good does not always triumph and that evil, with its
many faces, does sometimes succeed.

At least for a while.

If this book is read and acted on by others, I hope it will
be more than just what Colby called my "private parade."

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